Drafting for rookies

The title has two meanings and hopefully can be useful for two types of readers: fantasy rookies and fantasy vets.

There is no bigger season-defining moment than your draft. A bad draft almost guarantees you’ll lose. A great draft, unfortunately, guarantees nothing.

So how do you win a draft? Simple: Sleepers.

A sleeper is any player who you get at a bargain (that is in a later round than what his upcoming performance would dictate, or for less money when drafting in an auction scenario).

You will not find sleepers by simply printing off the list of top 200 players on yahoo/espn/si etc. But, if you draft this way, you’re also not going to make a fool out of yourself/ruin your draft.

So how do you find sleepers?

These days’ its both easier and harder than ever. There are thousands if not millions of posts online that will be about “sleepers.” That makes it easy, right?

Yes and no. For a beginner, yes. For those in more experienced leagues its some of a Schrödinger’s Cat situation. That is, once you put light on the situation, the situation changes. Translation: You cant have a guy be a sleeper, if everyone things he’s a sleeper. That will inherently push is draft position/cost higher, making him no longer a steal.

And yes, Schrödinger’s cat was just reference to explain fantasy baseball. 2 points for me.

Who’s a sleeper?

Sleepers fall in a number of categories:
1. Rookies (hence “drafting for rookies”) – these will be guys who are 1st or 2nd year players. Typically, they’ve had great minor league numbers and producing in the bigs is just the next natural step.
2. Post-hype sleepers – this is my favorite. Every year rookies get more and more love. This year the love is focused around Jayson Heyward and Steven Stratsburg. I’ve personally sent both guys a heart-shaped box of chocolates. But minor league/college success doesn’t always translate immediately and the fantasy world gets frustrated. The next year, or the year after that, when the hype is less, things click. That’s how I got BJ Upton and Adam Jones in their breakout years in like the 18th rounds of a draft. So who qualifies as a post hype sleeper this year? One way to see is look up 2009 Sleepers/Top Prospects and see who fell flat. Off the top of my head Lastings Millege could be one.

3. Bounce backs – Sometimes, guys just have bad years. That can tank their value, but may not sink their chances of rising back to their 2-year-ago performances. There’s a catch to this though: If you see a massive dip in last year’s stats, don’t necessarily assume last year (the bad year) as the fluke. Use projection sites like baseball prospectus or fangraphs to help you figure out which performance was out of the norm.

4. Injury risks – There are guys, such as Brian Roberts, who will have their value diminished on draft day because of injury risk (his back). These are not the sleepers I’d suggest. If the injury concern turns out to be no big deal, you get a guy at maybe 75 cents on the dollar. If it is a big deal, you could go broke and have them out the whole season.